Hi all,
I’ve been a fortunate reader of this board since discovery six few months ago. I have already benefited quite a bit from the analysis given. Many thanks to Saul and Bear who I’ve been following quite closely and to a myriad others for their well validated contributions.
Since joining this board I’ve become more motivated to curtail my holdings from 25+ stocks to around 10-12 and be more active in my analysis. My usual thesis has been buy and hold for 3-5 years but I see that buying when there are better growth opportunities and selling when that growth story is no longer the case can be equally, if not more, advantageous.
I’ve been an MF subscriber and investor since 2008 (a great year to join the school of hard knocks) and on occasion ventured into the options and hidden gems services but dropped out in favor of reading the boards and gathering my information that way. Having recently discovered this board, I’m curious as to what services people are subscribed to? I’m only asking because I value the opinions on this board and curious to see if there are any other services that members find valuable that I can add to my own learning.
Apologies if this is a bit off topic, I read through the knowledgebase to check and it seems to be ok?
I hope to gradually grow my presence here as I become more confident in my investing and discovery methods.
Thank you all and excited to be part of this community.
When one starts out (I’m not saying you are a newbie), one needs all the help one can get. I’m a reader so I stared buying books about investing. In time I found that most were quite useless. Then I started reading books by and about successful investors like Philip Fisher, Peter Lynch, and Warren Buffett and about traders and speculators like Jesse Livermore. That was a much better investment of money and time. Next I searched for an investment newsletter. After evaluating several I picked one I though best fit me. I did quite well with it but it didn’t teach me to pick stocks which is what I was after. TMF is my second investing board and select public boards have been great teachers. I’ve been a serious investor for 25 years so it’s a lot of history but the interesting thing is how one learns and evolves.
My objective has always been to be independent and not dependent. If that is redundant, it’s on purpose. I want to be responsible for my future. Whatever you do, don’t go only for the fish, go to learn how to fish! Now I no longer pay for advice.
Hi Denny,
Thanks so much for your response! I have been actively investing since 2008 and I’m about to turn 40. I consider myself a novice but informed. My CAGR to now has been around 20% year over year. Not too bad but not exceptional either. Most of my picks have been vetted from MF newsletters and boards and some were from following trends in my own sector which is tech.
I was a video game developer for a large media company who then went the start up route and eventually got burned out (and lost a lot of my own money), moved to Sri Lanka and now live in a remote surf town where I own and manage a little resort and restaurant. I’m now building a farm where I will start to grow my own food. It’s surrounded by jungle and I’ve got to deal with the odd elephant and crocodile from time to time but the surf is good and my 2 year old gets to grow up nice and wild.
I’ve managed to take some advice from Saul and trying to live my ideal life while I’m still young by the best means available to me - instead of waiting to hit it big and then clock out with limited time to enjoy it.
So that’s my story in short - if ever any of you want to visit Sri Lanka, consider me your inside source.
However to come back to my original point - my question was not what investment sources do you use in general but specific to what TMF services do people subscribe to? I want to step up my game (so to speak) and curious where others may have found value among the plethora of services TMF offers? (I’m also reading seeking alpha).
Thanks for those book suggestions though Denny, that is an added bonus of information and I will certainly get around to reading some of them!
I use three MF services: Rule Breakers, Stock Advisor, and Hidden Gems. With each service I figure that if I get one good idea from them they pays off, it will pay for years of subscription cost. Also the message boards are important. I probably get the most use out of RB (where Hubs, Shopify, Splunk and Ubiquiti are followed), second out of SA (where Nvidia and again Shopify are followed), and third out of HG (where Instructure and Alarm were followed, but I’m no longer in either). Also I do get a lot of ideas when they are presented on our board, and then I may look them up on Rule Breakers, for instance, and see if they were recommended, and then read the recommendations, and the posts on the board about the stock.
With the climate you are in, you may want to take a look at this website. They build low impact low cost beautiful homes and have a way of doing work shops to teach others to do the same.
Similar to Saul, I am subscribed to Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers, but not to Hidden Gems. With the offers that are put out pretty often, the annual cost for each is under $100 for each. I have considered Hidden Gems a little but never subscribed (the overall performance of Hidden Gems picks looks to be quite a bit lower than Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers, from the numbers that TMF publishes). I highly recommend listening to the Rule Breaker investing podcast, which is free.
I like to pay particular attention when a company is recommended on both Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers (or if it is a “triple rec” with those 2 plus here on Saul’s board). I have noted that companies cannot be recommended in Rule Breakers if David Gardner has already recommended them in Stock Advisor (NVDA and Amazon being 2 primary examples). Best Buys Now should be particularly paid attention to, on both services.
I do NOT simply blindly buy every recommendation of either service, but try to focus in on the recommendations that sound most interesting to me. Being here on Saul’s board for probably 8 months or so now, I have seen definitively the benefits of having a concentrated portfolio. Before subscribing to either of Stock Advisor or Rule Breakers, I thought that 2 ideas per month didn’t sound like all that many, but after having been subscribed for more than a year, I recognize that getting 4 ideas per month from both services is actually plenty and is more than could be analyzed as much as I would like while still having a full-time job.
Denny definitely has the right idea of learning how to fish rather than simply taking fish. The pricing of the portfolio services here at the Motley Fool (MDP, SuperNova, etc.) seems to be much less of a good value for someone in my shoes (still relatively young, and comfortable with deciding my own allocations) than Stock Advisor or Rule Breakers.
Thanks all for the responses. Rule breakers was one that I was looking at closely and was considering giving it a trial. I’m leaning closer to it now.
And Qazu thanks for the link to DomeGaia, that is fascinating - also I just came from a conference on permaculture and earth building and this seems like an ideal set up for the farm. Again, so many wonderful ideas coming from the members of this board. I am happy to be a part of this.
Saul, I’m taking your advice to heart and trying to take gains with each day.
BTsheufler, wow thanks! I was just looking at getting into the service but was being offered it at $199 for a year and you just sent me a deal for $160 for three years. Needless to say I leaned…
Cheers!
I’ve been leaning toward selling my CGNX and allocating those funds into some of my stronger convictions for growth such as ANET, NVDA and ATVI. After scoring a nice deal on RB I think I will go shopping.
I get all the boards as a TMFer, but if I were had to pay for subscriptions… this would be my thinking:
I am comfortable making my own stock selections and allocation decisions and I’m comfortable with simple options strategies.
If I were to subscribe, I would take RB and SA. And I might entertain the idea of owning IV. Possibly…PRO. Nothing more.
SA: A lot of good companies between the two brothers, plus a useful options board. Also, a lot of dreck recommendations, but you can ignore those. Overall, more activity on the boards at SA than most, although not all posts are worthwhile.
RB: Some very good solid companies… and some out and out speculative stuff that I no longer dabble in. But some folks like those speculative companies.
IV: A few unique companies that might be worth your while from time to time. Depends on your investing style.
PRO: Some love it, partly for the intensive TMF support. For me, they have a few unique recommendations that are interesting if you can justify the subscription cost.
Overall, I could do just fine with only SA and RB. If I only was willing to pay for one, it’d be SA.
Rob
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
For me it would be Rule Breakers. Jives with me if you are looking for growth companies. Not all the picks will be great, but if they give me 3-6 recs that I like a year, it is totally worth it. Kind of depends on what type of investor you are like Rob mentions. SA has had awesome recs in the past, but that was before RB and Hidden Gems. I dont think the home run picks will come from that service anymore (Netflix, Amazon, Priceline, etc would be picked in RB now)
Echoing others, for what it’s worth I think RB and SA are far and away my favorite services and where I spend the most time on boards and following recs.
Thank you everyone for your feedback and opinions. I was leaning towards RB as I already have SA and have now happily signed on for both. Looking forward to seeing more of your great commentary on these boards.
